Jesus: A Prophet Without Honor!

Mark 6:3-4

Not everyone responds to Jesus in the same way. Paul says His death on the cross as our substitute is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Cor 1:23). However, even before the cross, those who knew Jesus best found His ministry a scandal! Jesus’ teachings and miracles do not automatically produce faith. They actually offended those who changed120 His diapers, who learned the Torah and enjoyed table fellowship with Him, and who at one time gave Him hugs and kisses. Not anymore. All that has changed.

The word “offended” in verse 3 is skandalizomai. They are “scandalized” by all this talk and hoopla about Jesus. He offends their personal sensibilities. His works they cannot deny, and His words they cannot handle, but they do not care! In spite of overwhelming evidence they will not believe He is the Christ, the Son of God.

So two thousand years ago they were thinking, “A Jew from nowhere executed unjustly is the Savior and only Savior of the world? Impossible! No way! I am offended.” We are not the first to think so.

Jesus responds with a saying He made famous. Aligning Himself with the prophetic tradition, He acknowledges with a broken heart His rejection by those who knew Him best, those you would have expected would stand with Him no matter what anyone else said or did. They knew Him but could not explain Him, so they rejected Him. His hometown, His relatives, even His own household cast their ballot against Him. This prophet from God meets the same fate as so many others who had gone before Him.

Sometimes we spend so much time with someone that we no longer appreciate them. For those of us raised in a Christian environment, this is certainly an ever-present danger we must guard against. In a sense we should never get comfortable with Jesus. His goal is not to make us comfortable. His goal is to bring us to repentance and faith, humbly falling at His feet confessing Him as Lord and God. He is not your homeboy, your buddy, or your soul mate. He is not your genie in a bottle obligated to grant your every wish.

Nor is He some ordinary guy who lived two thousand years ago, stirred things up for a few years, and got nailed to a cross for His troubles. His hometown got it wrong. His relatives, at least for a while, got it wrong. The religious leaders got it wrong. Rome got it wrong. And still today people get Him wrong!

Do you see Him for who He truly is and call Him Lord, Savior, Master, King? Do you let Jesus set the agenda for your life and—as 8:34-38 says—for your death?

Mark 6:5-6

Jesus left His hometown of Nazareth and moved on to teach in other villages. To our knowledge He never again returned home. The unbelief of the Nazarenes brought about a twofold reaction.

Jesus did no mighty works in His hometown. He healed just a few.

How could the omnipotent Son of God be bound, limited by the unbelief of Nazareth? He could not do miracles because He would not in the face of blatant unbelief. Morally and spiritually He was constrained not to reveal His power in such an environment of rejection and unbelief. “He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.” Oh, but imagine what He would have done in the presence of faith!

Come to Him in faith like Jairus and the woman who bled for 12 years, and He will heal your body and bring your only daughter back from death (5:21-43). Reject Him in unbelief, and He does not do for you what He does for others. You also send Him on His way in search of those who will listen to His message and embrace Him as Lord.

Tim Keller is helpful here: “Jesus’ miracles were not ‘magic tricks’ designed to prove how powerful he was, but ‘signs of the kingdom’ to show how his redemptive power operates. His miracles always healed and restored and delivered people in ways that revealed how we are to find him by faith and have our lives transformed by him.... He ‘could’ not do a deed that would not redeem” (Keller, “Mark,” 62).

Hebrews 11:6 reminds us, “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him” (emphasis added).

Only twice in the Bible is Jesus said to be amazed. In Luke 7:9 He saw the faith of a Roman centurion who believed He could heal from a distance with just a word. And in Mark 6:6 He was amazed by the unbelief of those of His own hometown. Compare versions.

Jesus and His hometown are dumbfounded, each by the other. They could not get past Jesus’ humble origins and familiar feel. Jesus was astounded at their unbelief in light of what He said and did. This sadly foreshadows the unbelief of the nation of Israel as a whole, of many in our world, and even of many in our churches.

122It is a shock to our system that the sovereign God would come to us from such a humble town, a humble family, a humble trade, and a humble nation. It is a scandal to be sure. Once again we see, “God’s ways are not our ways!”

The preacher Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) said, “Familiarity breeds contempt, but only with contemptible things or among contemptible people” (Wiersbe, Be Diligent, 59). The contempt shown by the citizens of Nazareth said nothing about Jesus, but it said a lot about them.

What about you and me? Do we show contempt toward the Jesus revealed in Scripture? Are we “scandalized” by the simplicity of His gospel? Are we offended by the unfairness of its message that says a child molester or even a serial rapist and murderer on death row can be made right with God by childlike faith in Jesus Christ? Or do we allow the biblical evidence to slay our biases and reshape our preconceived notions of who Jesus must be for us to accept Him and trust Him?

Or again, have we become so familiar with Him, having been raised in church all our lives, that His words no longer convict, His miracles no longer astonish, and His death on the cross no longer strikes the chord of “Amazing Grace”? Familiarity can blind us to the greatness and glory of a Savior if we are not careful. Spiritually inoculated at some point in life, we become immune to the real thing. I have seen it far too many times. We must not come to Jesus on our terms but on His. This prophet was without honor in His own hometown. We cannot make the same mistake in our own hearts. The consequences are eternal.